<$Tuesday, April 15, 2008$>
Prioritizing opportunities for joy
| Last night I gleefully handed over $70 so that Husband and I can attend this. I was going to blog today about how I didn't flinch away from it or regret it for an instant because this is something that belongs in the "Totally Worth It" file. And then this morning I dropped $500 on car repairs. Sigh. I still don't regret buying the tickets, and I doubt knowing I'd need costly emergency car repairs beforehand would have made a difference. Some things, generally things that aren't STUFF, that aren't tangible and don't take up space in your home, but experiences that thrill you -- and yes, meeting my favorite author-slash-mentor-slash literary hero is pretty dang thrilling to me -- and fill up your memories with good times. This is why I don't regret having maxed out my Discover card to help pay for our honeymoon, even though I'm still paying for it a year and a half later. Some things really are Totally Worth It. Worth scaling back in other areas for a while, worth extra hours at the office, worth shelling out the money without even batting an eye. It's easy to forget that in the quest to be frugal and debt-free. Of course, routine car maintenance is also Totally Worth It, if it keeps you from having to plunder your emergency fund for emergency repairs (actually, we have been keeping up with car maintenance pretty well, and this fanbelt wackiness isn't something we could have prevented. I'm just sayin'). But this is exactly the sort of thing emergency funds are for, so I'll try not to fret too much about it. Labels: emergency fund, spending |
<$Wednesday, February 13, 2008$>
The Food Problem: Keeping track of sales
| It's New Grocery Flier day. I'm not planning on buying any more groceries this week, but my husband has a habit of calling me up at the last minute with a list of things to pick up on the way home, so I want to be armed and ready with a list of what's on sale to steer him towards if he feels we absolutely must have more food in the stockpile before next payday. I've been having good luck with My Grocery Deals. It's similar to The Grocery Game and Coupon Mom, except that unlike the former it's free, and unlike the latter it's a lot more streamlined and easier to navigate (at least for me), and unlike either of the former it actually includes most of the grocery stores in my area. Once I registered and selected the stores where I prefer to shop, it started e-mailing me updates whenever any new sales prices get posted. When I log into the site it lets me organize deals by category, or by store, or I can search for specific products. Also, like both of the others, it includes a printable coupon gallery. It's pretty ADD-friendly, what with the e-mail notices, so that should keep me from forgetting all about sales and coupons. Slowly but surely, I'm getting on top of the food problem. Oh yes, I am. Labels: food problem, resources, spending |
<$Monday, February 11, 2008$>
Weekend report
| Well, we got through the weekend without spending any money. Which isn't that much of an accomplishment, seeing as how we didn't go anywhere; but also seeing as we started out anticipating a pizza night and then decided against it, we still get to pat ourselves on the back. Tonight I've got to stop and pick a few things up for Husband, which is usual, but he kept his list really short, so he gets commended for that, too. And I'm going to eat a snack before I stop so I won't be tempted to deviate from the list. I did spend some money at woot! today (a site I normally do my best to avoid), but considering we've been wanting mp3 players forever and these were pretty decent ones going for under $10, I thought it was a justifiable splurge. I got one for each of us. Hopefully they'll arrive in time to load his up with love songs and give it to him for Valentine's day. Oh, and we also spent $90 at the vet Friday, getting Fizzgigg's thyroid tested, but that came out of the emergency fund. Hopefully, whatever's wrong with him won't be too costly to treat (we're still waiting for the test results), but whatever it is, we'll pay it. We just want our little guy well. :( |
<$Friday, February 8, 2008$>
Payday Report - First half of February '08
| I got paid this Wednesday, thank goodness. It was a longer-than-usual time between this payday and the last, and we failed at stretching the last paycheck over the whole 20 days. But the good news is that this paycheck covered a longer pay period, and one that included overtime at that, so it's one of the better ones I've gotten since I worked here. As I mentioned below, we're still working on the Food Problem. This is a constant work in progress, but I'm pretty proud of how well I did matching coupons to sale fliers and buying mostly items that were on special. Like I said earlier, we didn't spend less on this go 'round, but we did buy more for the same amount of money, and hopefully it will last longer than usual, thereby saving us money in the long run. I also shook things up a little by trying some new things and going back to some old methods when it comes to keeping track of the budget. After I finally managed to build a budget spreadsheet that actually works for me, I stopped using my desk calendar to keep track of my bills. I think that's a large part--actually, probably THE reason--I missed that Paypal payment last month. So I've reinstated the calendar. The budget spreadsheet's great for doing the math and allocating funds, but it's lousy for keeping track of due dates and whether or not I actually paid a bill. I also went back to lumping all of our grocery categories together under a single fund. Separating them all out turned out to be too much of a pain in the butt for my ADDness to be bothered with on a regular basis. Next to that, I added a "discretionary fund" to provide a cushion to draw from if we go over our grocery budget. Our goal is to NOT go over the budget, and at the end of the pay period move whatever's left in the discretionary amount over to savings. This is also the fund we'll draw from if we decide to go see a movie or go out to eat--which, given my husband's homework load, isn't likely to be happening too much during the semester. The other change I made was to take out my entire grocery budget in cash and put it in an envelope. This way I instantly know how much money we have left without having to go through the receipts and subtract our spending; and with cash I can't possibly miscalculate and overdraw my checking account. Managing money is a constant learning process for me; sometimes, it's a re-learning process, as I forget to do what works, or try to fix something that ain't broke. Usually when I do that last part, I'm the one who ends up being broke. For the time being, though, I'm pretty happy with the changes I've made, and I think they're going to get us back on the right track. |
<$Thursday, February 7, 2008$>
The food problem: still a problem
| Okay, I've tried to make peace with how much we spend on groceries by rationalizing about how we're foodies and we don't get out that much anyway, but the hard cold fact is that we still spend way more on groceries than two people should. For the last several months we've been going over our already substantial grocery budget, to the point that we spend more on food, alcohol, toiletries, supplements, pet supplies, et al each month than we spend on rent. Sure, our rent's cheap, but still: something is very, very wrong there. As of this writing, though, we're beginning to make some progress. Part of the problem is that I got lazy about hunting down bargains and clipping coupons, and that part's easily fixable. Last night I went to the store armed with a wallet full of coupons matched to advertised store specials, and while I didn't necessarily come out spending less than I normally do on the first grocery trip of the pay period, I did come out with substantially more food to show for it. That should help with the second part of our problem--making our food last longer. We've been in the bad, bad habit of stopping by the store any time we run out of something, instead of seeing what else we can eat instead until the next payday. I've been carping at Husband about how this practice really needs to stop, and he's trying his best to cooperate and eat what's on hand instead of immediately replacing something he's run out of. He's also trying to be more cost conscious when he makes his list, as am I. I think (hope) this is a pretty good recipe for finally getting our grocery budget under control. If we can learn to eat within our budget, then we'll have no trouble living beneath our means and building up our wealth. Labels: marriage, money management, personal, spending |
<$Monday, February 4, 2008$>
1-Spot Shopping
| It's no secret that I love Target. So much so that for the most part I had to stop shopping there, because every time I went I was overcome with temptation to spend money on things I don't really need. However, on occasion, if I want to treat myself, I'll let myself go in with $10 and go crazy in the 1-Spot. If you don't know what the 1-Spot is, it's the little section at the front of the store where they sell everything for a dollar. Well, it used to be everything for a dollar. They've changed it to "nothing over $2.50." Still, you can get some pretty great stuff there. During some of my 1-Spot Sprees I've scored the following:
...and much more. Most recently, I picked up this stuffed puppy dog that made a perfect topper for the diaper cake I made for my sister's baby shower. I saw a lot of other baby items there that day, too, but as I had already blown my budget shopping elsewhere, I left them alone. :( My husband has put a moratorium on my 1-Spot shopping, especially for household items, until after we move, saying we've got enough to pack as it is. Once we do move, though, I know where I'll go first for household odds & ends and small decorating touches. I love the 1-Spot, even more than the dollar store. What about you, dear reader? What kind of 1-Spot treasures have you scored? |
<$Friday, January 25, 2008$>
The simplicity of the Post-it
 There's more money in my checking account than is reflected on my debit tracking Post-it. Hmmm.I need to go over my receipts and bill payments again before I get too excited. I know that part of that amount is my husband's spending stipend which I haven't yet moved over to his bank. There's a lot more than that in there, though... there must be something outstanding that I'm just not remembering right now. This is why I've reverted to my Post-it system. I tried to get all fancy and high-tech by tracking my spending in a spreadsheet, but that just got me into trouble. It's an ADD thing, I guess--the more trouble something is to access, the less likely I am to use it. I could only conveniently access the spreadsheet from my work computer, which means any spending I did wouldn't get subtracted from my available funds until I came to work, added up my receipts, and then signed in to Google docs to enter the amount into my spreadsheet. Sure, the spreadsheet did the math for me, which is always nice, but it felt cumbersome, like a big chore, and also something I had to work to remember to do. My Post-it system, on the other hand, is always with me. It's as simple to use as picking up a pen and doing a little elementary subtraction. If I want to know how much money we still have, I just have to look at the Post-it pad in my wallet. If there are any receipts stuffed behind it, I know I still need to subtract those. It's pretty much the same as keeping a checkbook register, except without all the extra spaces and categories that make me feel like I fail at finances and at life. And it works; with the spreadsheet system, I had an overdraft a few weeks ago. As long as I've used my trusty Post-it system, that hasn't happened once. Sometimes low-tech is the best way to go. It may not be for everybody, but for me, the simplest method is usually the best. The more accessible and in plain view something is, the more likely I am to remember to use it, and the fewer steps needed, the less likely I am to put it off until later. It may seem inelegant, but the Post-it method is the most ADD-friendly system for tracking my spending that I've yet to find. Labels: ADD, money management, spending |
<$Tuesday, January 22, 2008$>
How to be a Frugal Foodie
| That title is a bit misleading, because I don't really know how to be a frugal foodie. That's something I'm still trying to learn. I worry a lot about our food spending. We're spending a little less now than the last time I complained about it, but we've still got a ridiculously large food budget for just two people. I've realized something, though: as long as we've got the basics covered and we're well-fed, we're happy. Sure, we enjoy going out every now and then, and we like stuff as much as the next consumer; but for the most part, we're homebodies who are easily entertained. Homebodies, and foodies. Food is entertainment for us. When I remember that, I feel a lot better about our grocery bills. Even so, we could stand to cut down on our grocery bill. I'm sure this will become easier to do once we have a kitchen in which to cook our own healthy meals, but in the mean time, I'm constantly on the lookout for frugal food advice and money-saving grocery tips, such as you'll find at the links below: Some of this stuff I already do, and some of it's just impractical for the way I live right now. But there's also some stuff in there that's new to me that I'm willing to try. For now, though, since we've already run through our entire grocery budget for the pay period and we still have sixteen days to go (I know, right?!!!), I'm going to challenge us both to be creative about making the food we already have stretch as far as possible. I'm sure if we put our heads together and get creative, we can enjoy the food we have without spending much more. I hope. |
<$Monday, January 21, 2008$>
Payday Report - January 18
| Since today is a bank holiday, I received my direct deposit on Friday. There's not really much to tell--it's a slow time of year at the office, and between short pay periods and zero overtime, things have been a bit tight, and this half of the month is no different. I had enough to pay the bills, put a very little bit into savings, cover our usual grocery spending and give my husband and I each a small personal spending stipend, of which mine mostly went to help pay for my sister's baby shower. I now have just $20 to last me the next sixteen days. I don't think we'll have to dip into our savings to help stretch this one out, though, so that's an improvement over the last couple pay periods. I'll have some overtime on the next one, too, plus in a month I'll have blog ad revenue starting to roll in again, but that all goes straight to the credit card debt. For a while last year I started tracking my Net Worth IQ, and that was fun until it started going the wrong way. I want to start back up again this year, though, and do it consistently from month to month. Once I get time to set it up, I'll post my progress. I know I have a negative net worth right now. It will be a triumph just to get it to $0. I think by stepping up my blogging game, though, I just might be able to make that happen this year. Labels: goals, money management, personal, spending |
<$Thursday, January 17, 2008$>
When you have to do your dont's
| Tonight I'm going to break two of my cardinal money rules: I'm going grocery shopping without creating a budget first, and I'm using my savings to do it. It's really not that big a deal. I get paid tomorrow, so I'll be able to pay the savings right back. And I can make an educated guess about how much my paycheck will be and make a tentative grocery budget off of that. I'm only shopping tonight because otherwise it will be Monday until I have time to get groceries, and we don't have enough to get us through the weekend. So this is justified. Still, it makes me uneasy, and makes me feel like I've failed at something. Perhaps I should ease up on myself. Sometimes you just do what you have to do, and there's no need to feel guilty about that. But in the back of my mind is the knowledge that easing up on myself is the edge of a slippery slope downward into financial chaos. If I'm not hard enough on myself, things could get bad fast. So tonight, I'll feel like a jerk as I hand over the ING debit card to pay for groceries without knowing exactly how much money I have in the grocery budget for the rest of the month. But tomorrow, I'll do my budget and pay that money back, and the shopping will be done, and then I'll feel better. Labels: emergency fund, money management, personal, spending |
Blog Review: Conscious Spending
| I discovered Conscious Spending yesterday through one of my blog networks. I like its focus on eco-friendly shopping and businesses that support good causes. There are a lot of ideas and resources here geared toward creating responsible consumers. Of course, I'm trying to get away from the consumer mind-set, and some of the things linked here don't fit my meager budget--like these reusable shopping bags that are to-die-for and I want one so badly--but overall, this blog is about making wise spending decisions, and isn't that what frugality is all about? Labels: blog-recs, charity, frugality, green, healthy living, spending |
<$Wednesday, October 10, 2007$>
The food thing, debt progress, and breathing freely once again
| Wow. I sure didn't mean to go another entire week without posting, but things got kinda hectic around here. The good news is, I've got a lot of overtime coming to me on my next paycheck, which should help us get back on top of things, so YAY! With our emergency savings fully funded again, I'm feeling much better about life, the universe and everything. Including our food spending. Between utilizing coupons and store fliers and a little restraint, I've managed to cut it back to a more respectable level, and Husband and I are finally on the same page about extra treats coming out of our personal allowances once the food fund has run dry. But I've also lightened up a bit about it all. We're foodies. Food = entertainment for us, and it's not like we spend much on other entertainment avenues--Netflix and the extremely occasional, must be seen on a big screen movie outing are pretty much our only non-food (and I count alcohol as part of the food expenses) entertainment. We really don't get out much, especially since the fall semester started. Besides that, Husband has special dietary needs, and we're both health-conscious enough to make many "cheap" food options off-limits. Realizing all of this has helped me feel better about the fact that what we spend on food for just the two of us is more than what some families of four get by on. I think we've figured out a balance between knowing what's worth shelling out for, where we can skimp, and knowing what the rules are for handling the budget that we can both be comfortable with for the time being. In debt news, applying my blog revenue to my credit card via weekly payments is proving a lot more productive at knocking down the debt than just tacking $50 or $100 on to the minimum payment was. My blogs don't really bring in that much on a weekly basis, but it's added up to reduce my debt this last month by about $100 more than it would have been reduced otherwise. So that's a method I'm liking and sticking to. All in all, things are looking up. The financial aid check was a huge help, and after several relatively small paychecks (thanks to short pay periods and a lack of overtime) in a row we've got some larger ones to look forward to again. If we can just be careful with our holiday spending, we ought to start pulling ahead for the rest of the year. After a couple of months of living paycheck-to-paycheck and treading water, it feels great to finally be making some headway again. Labels: credit cards, frugality, money management, personal, spending |
<$Wednesday, October 3, 2007$>
Happy days are here again.
| I'm feeling better today, thanks mainly to an astute LiveJournaler who pointed out over there that maybe I should cut my pills in half and try taking smaller doses. I like to think I might have thought of that myself if I hadn't been drugged to the gills already, but I'm grateful somebody took me by the virtual hand and pointed out the obvious. So I tried that, and lo, I'm feeling much more myself today. Thank God. The other reason for my chipper mood is that the university finally forked over a check for Husband's financial aid, less tuition and fees, and it's even bigger than we anticipated. So now I can stop fretting about the dwindling of our savings account and pay back our emergency fund in full. AND we can buy a new home computer. And we might even be able to set aside enough for us both to do some clothes shopping which, aside from getting to pick out a suit jacket and a couple of tops for my birthday last spring (thanks, Mom!), neither of us has done in over a year (and that little shopping spree was forced on us by virtue of forgetting to take half of our luggage with us on our honeymoon). Our respective wardrobes are beginning to look a little tattered and worse for wear. In the meantime, I'm dumping the entire amount into our savings so it can be earning interest while we decide how best to budget it. But first, I have to go stick it in my local checking account, which I get to go do right now. Whee! Labels: healthy living, money management, saving+investing, spending |
<$Thursday, September 6, 2007$>
Payday Report for September 6, 2007
| The bills are paid and the rest is budgeted. I realized that I need to spend a month tracking my expenses more thoroughly before I'm sure how much to allocate to each grocery category, so I've still got a main grocery fund, but I did separate out pet costs and supplements. I also set aside a separate restaurant/take-out budget, so that'll neither cut into our groceries nor create any resentment if either of us have to cover this out of our allowance. Our individual spending allowances shrunk, but I think it's an amount we can both live with. Now we just have to make sure we stick to our budget, remembering that if we go over, it comes out of our allowances, not out of savings, and definitely not going on credit cards. We also had some medical and automotive costs to cover, so I couldn't add anything to savings this time around; but we're still waiting for Husband's student loan check, which should more than adequately cover everything we borrowed from savings last month. So I'm not stressing about that. All in all, it could be better, but it could also be a heck of a lot worse. Now I just need to sort through my coupons and see how far I can make our grocery budget stretch for the next two weeks (and change). Labels: money management, personal, spending |
<$Wednesday, August 29, 2007$>
The Food Problem - Link Roundup
| I'm a bit muzzy-headed this morning. Not sure if I overdid my workout, or didn't get enough sleep, or if the Benadryl I took at bedtime didn't wear off completely, or some combination of the above, but I was pretty woozy there for a while. I'm better now, except for the brain-fog that's refusing to lift. So please forgive any incoherence or errors in this post. At any rate, as you know if you've been reading this space, I'm trying to tighten up our food spending, because we've begun to spend way too much on food for just two people, and we simply can't keep going on that way. I've been doing some online digging for solutions, and in the process I rounded up some links to some pretty good info. But before I share them, here's some background. Our Situation We rent the upstairs half of my mom's house. Our "kitchen" consists of a mini-fridge, a microwave, and the recent addition of an indoor grill. We have access to my mom's kitchen and are able to store a few things in her refrigerator, but a lot of people live in that house; the kitchen is usually pretty crowded and not at all an enjoyable place in which to cook, and real estate in the freezer is at a premium. In short: the standard advice to cook meals and freeze them for later just doesn't work for us. We don't get to do a lot of cooking, which means we rely a lot on pre-packaged meals. Which in turn means that we get really bored and downright depressed with our options and tend to relieve our boredom with fast food. Bad us. Also, buying in bulk is not an option, since we don't have any room to store anything extra. What We're Doing Right A lot of the standard food-budget advice is stuff we already do. I never go grocery shopping without a list, for one thing, and I almost never deviate from it. I usually have a snack before I go so that I'm not tempted by every little yummy-looking thing I see. I rarely splurge on lattes and mainly drink the free drip coffee at my office, and keep a bag of grounds at home for the weekends. We're not snobs, and we already buy generic or store-brands when possible. We do the bulk of our shopping at the Super Wal-Mart, which, much as I loathe going there for many and varied reasons, consistently has the best prices, even if they don't have the greatest selection. What We Could Do Better Planning. We don't do nearly enough of this. Usually, right before I go shopping my husband and I both think of the things we typically eat that we're out of, and make a list. We don't really plan out our week. I keep a stash of convenience foods at my office to eat throughout the week, and when grocery time comes I automatically restock everything. Planning our meals would probably not only force us to think about our spending, but keep us from falling into the rut that leads to boredom and the fast food fix. Communicating. We're really lousy at this part. We're both so determined not to let finances be a source of conflict in our marriage that sometimes I simply avoid the topic with my husband, which is counterproductive, I know. I need to be better at keeping him informed on what our spending limits are, and at pointing out when something on his list is simply too expensive. Keeping track. My current budgeting method is basically to start with the amount of my paycheck, subtract all of the bills that are due that half of the month, subtract a comfortable amount to go into savings, and then divvy up the rest into a blanket "Grocery Fund" and separate-but-equal personal spending allowances for my husband and myself. After that, apart from keeping track of how much money is left in the fund, I don't really track where it goes. Also, the Grocery Fund covers food, drinks, and certain OTC medications that we both take. Personal care products, health supplements and other non-food items that we don't share come out of our allowances. I think I need to start breaking down the grocery budget into categories and include room for these last items. That might mean we have to make due with smaller allowances, but if we're not having to spend them on vitamins and hair product, that shouldn't be a big deal. Now to the links. Advice Like I said, much of the advice in these articles simply doesn't apply to our situation; but that doesn't mean there's not good stuff in there. GRS has a great post on Healthy Food on an Unhealthy Budget. The comment section is chock-full of both good advice and links to more good resources. Yet more can be found at this Lifehacker article that backtracks the original post. Oprah's web site (yeah, I know) has a good article challenging the notion that healthy eating is expensive. This ABC News article is full of pretty standard, but still good, advice, as is this article from ClubMom. Money Savers For those who are able to cook, The Healthy Hillbilly Housewife has a lot of healthy, budget-friendly recipes. Frugal Cuisine is more focused on frugal than on healthy, but her cost-effective Chinese-influenced recipes might be just the thing we need to add some much needed variety to our diet. OrganicCoupons.org gathers up a lot of good health food coupon resources. Grocery Coupon Guide is also a good starting place for finding coupons and other money saving offers for a wide variety of things. We shop a lot (too much) at Wild Oats, so I signed up for their newsletter to receive in-store coupons and be alerted to sales. Mambo Sprouts has a good selection of printable organic grocery coupons. I mentioned this one earlier, but Coupon Mom is another good coupon resource. I like that they have a list specific to Wal-Mart. I haven't seen anything on there yet that covers the things we normally buy, but I'm still keeping my eye on it, just in case. I think I have enough info now to develop a strategy. Hopefully, through better budgeting, planning, and taking advantage of the coupons and resources listed here, beginning next payday I'll be able to reduce our grocery spending while still providing us with a sufficient variety of healthy foods. I'll let you know how it goes. If you have any tips or ideas for us that might be better suited to our situation, I'd love to hear about it in the comments. Labels: frugality, healthy living, money management, spending |
<$Friday, August 24, 2007$>
Gaming the System
| I took off work yesterday for Husband's birthday. It was a pretty nice day for us both, for being low-key and low-budget. I was originally going to take him out to breakfast before his classes, but he decided he'd rather sleep in and spend the money on pizza that evening, so that's what we did. We couldn't find any specials or coupons to take advantage of, but it was his birthday, so we went ahead and made the splurge. I also picked him up an inexpensive-but-delicious birthday mini-cake from the Wal-Mart bakery. It was the perfect size--enough for us each to have a generous slice, and then it was gone, never to taunt us with its high-calorie numminess again. That's the last food splurge for us until our anniversary next month. We're still trying to get a handle on this food spending thing in a way that will let us both feel satisfied and eat healthfully while not spending a small fortune on food every month. Cutting out fast food is the most obvious answer, but we also spend a LOT on groceries. GRS has an article on The Grocery Game, but according to his commenters, this is best suited to larger families and isn't much good for individuals or couples who, like us, like to eat very specific foods and buy as much organic as possible. There's also Coupon Mom, which, unlike the Grocery Game, is free. I think I'll try her out and see if I can't at least save us some money on our non-food groceries. I actually used to be pretty good at the coupon game, combining online coupon sites with double-coupon days to almost double my grocery budget. But after we changed our eating habits (for the most part), I realized that coupons just tempted me to buy things that I wouldn't have bought otherwise, so I quit using them. There's got to be some kind of compromise. I'll be trying Coupon Mom out, and also looking around for coupons and specials on organics and things we actually buy. I'll keep y'all posted on the results. Labels: frugality, healthy living, money management, spending |
<$Monday, August 20, 2007$>
Carnival Time Again
| We're still falling down in the food department. But we finally broke out one of the many Target gift cards we received for our wedding last year (which, I think we'd better hurry up and use these before they start losing value; we've been holding off on spending them until we moved to our new place, but seeing as how that doesn't appear to be happening any time soon...) and bought the indoor grill that Husband has been salivating over since we filled out our gift registry last summer. This increases our cooking abilities and options, which, hopefully, will translate to more cooking real food at home and less eating out. Hopefully. The 114th Carnival of Personal Finance is up at The Simple Dollar. I don't have anything listed this week, but I found a couple of articles there that are appropos to my getting my hinder back in gear in the budgeting and finance department: I've Paid For This Twice Already has started a new Budgeting for Dummies series. Part 1 examines the importance of lists, for which I can confidently vouch. I think my laziness when it comes to lists is partially responsible for my current financial stagnation. No Credit Needed has done a nice Envelope System Video Tutorial. I used a similar envelope system to save money for my wedding and honeymoon, and I still use envelopes to save for short-term goals. The rest of my money is in electronic form, and instead of envelopes I use Post-Its to allocate and track my funds. This worked pretty well for me until, as I mentioned above, I got lazy about writing stuff down. I'm considering going to an envelope system for our food budget. Maybe this would help cut down on our food spending, especially if I don't carry the cash with me and only take it out when there's a legitimate need. I can't be tempted to pick up burgers on the way home from work if I don't have any food money on me, and it would also force my husband to plan ahead and think about what he really needs instead of calling me at work and asking me to stop and grab fast food or groceries for him on the way home. Anyway, back to the carnival: The Digerati Life has a list of the Top 10 Wealth Building Ways of Ordinary People. I must admit, I find #9 an attractive option. It ties in well with my goal to launch a web design business within the next few years, and domains don't really cost that much. A hundred dollars could buy up a handful of domain names, and if just one of them is a jackpot domain (i.e. coveted by a wealthy entity who is willing to shell out big money for it), you could see big returns. Digerati also has a good article on What Low Income Earners Can Do to Get Off Minimum Wage. Thankfully, it's been over a decade since I've been forced to rely on a minimum wage job. It was my basic computer skills that got me out of that trap, and it's been my computer skills, even more than my college degree, that have pulled me up the corporate ladder. The article advises education as the best way to beat minimum wage, but I would emphasize a computer education. Even a single basic computer literacy course will provide someone with the skills they need to get an entry-level office job, often with companies that will pay for additional training and education. Other good links not included in this week's Carnival: We're In Debt asks, Can I Use My Emergency Fund for That? - the temptation to spend our savings on wants instead of needs is another issue Husband and I keep struggling with. Finally, The Budget Fashionista has a $10 Off Old Navy coupon to share. Now I'm off to track our food spending for the last several weeks so I can show Husband just how out-of-control we've gotten. Cheers! Labels: carnivals, finance+blogs, money management, spending |
<$Wednesday, August 15, 2007$>
Non-news, and news that actually is news: windfalls, computers and out-of-control food spending. Oh my!
| There are things I want to talk about here, things I'm tempted to be very excited about, but I won't let myself yet, on both counts. Sorry to be so enigmatic. There are a couple of things on the horizon, the thought of which have me incredibly jazzed, but they're still only maybes at the moment, and I've learned from harsh experienced that it's not a good idea to go all blog-squee about things that may be. Too often have I had to come back and say "never mind" when it didn't work out. So I'm biting my tongue. But I'm also chomping at the bit. And that ain't easy. In news of things that actually are, Husband got approved for more than enough financial aid to cover his tuition and books both this semester and next, with enough left over (once the university gets around to taking out their share and then cutting him a check) to finally replace our dead computer. Hallelujah and amen! Of course, that won't mean much in terms of getting online from home until we finally move to the city where we can get better-than-dialup access. But considering that I was all gung-ho to take some online web/graphic design courses this year (paid for courtesy of my company's awesome benefits department and their tuition reimbursement program), and had to pass on it this semester because of said lack of home computer, I'm thrilled that at least I'll be able to enroll next semester. Husband starts his classes tomorrow. Yeah, I don't really get starting a term on Thursday, either, but whatever. I'm hoping that his increased activity and workload will translate to us going out less, which will result in spending less and saving more. We really need to get in gear in the "spending less and saving more" department, because we got pretty lazy and complacent about it over the summer. Our biggest downfall, as I've mentioned here before, has been food. With our extremely limited refrigerator space and lack of a stove, we're pretty limited in our options for preparing meals and eating at home, and that makes it hard to have a lot of variety in what we eat. Without variety, we both get to the point where we just can't stand the thought of eating the same stuff one more night, and inevitably we end up either going out to a restaurant or going to get takeout. We spent $60 on deli sushi the other night, which is just inexcusable, and I hated having to account for it (even though it was really yummy sushi). That's about a quarter of our whole grocery budget, for one meal! Clearly, we need to have our asses kicked. That, or I need to poke around this here intertubes and research some more budget-friendly options for preparing a healthy (and, preferably, healthful) variety of foods when you don't have a kitchen. And also, we really, really, REALLY need to stop watching the Food Network and the Travel Channel. Especially that Anthony Bourdain. Labels: extra income, healthy living, loans, money management, spending |
<$Tuesday, August 7, 2007$>
Payday Report for 8/6/07 - The Last Temptation of Paypal
| It's a day late, but here's how I'm doing (beyond being sleep deprived, thanks to Harry Potter (not finished yet, don't spoil me), and therefore a bit terse). It was a good payday, reflecting an extra-long pay period and several hours of overtime. There should have been plenty of money there to put in savings. There would have been if not for my experiment with using my Paypal card to pay for everything, using Buyer Credit as the backup funding source. True, the immediate cash back reward meant I spent less on every purchase. But too quickly did both my husband and I sink into the "we can put this on the card and worry about paying for it later" mentality. Thankfully, we didn't do this with any major purchases, but we ran up a ridiculous food bill over the last couple of weeks, giving in way too much to temptation and relying on credit to sate our food cravings. Apart from the financial consequences, it wasn't all that great for our waistlines, either. So, determined not to carry a balance on yet another card, I paid it all off, which didn't leave us much money for extras this half of the month, or for debt reduction. It also meant I had to dip into our savings to pay some surprise medical bills from June that weren't covered by my deductible. Grumble grumble. It's not the end of the world--again, I'm just thankful that we even have a savings account to take care of this stuff--but it's not very encouraging, either, and I'm irritated with us both for being so lax and wasteful. No more Paypal rewards. Clearly, we're unable to resist the temptation to use credit, and the cash back is hardly worth it if we end up spending more than we would otherwise. *** In other news, the house hunt is on hold for the time being, until we know how much financial aid my husband will be getting for this semester. I went with him to enroll on Friday, and only then did we learn that, despite the fact that he filed his FAFSA in January of this year, he still had to fill out a renewal FAFSA for the fall/spring term. So we got that done, and now we're in wait-and-see mode. Last semester he didn't have quite enough hours to qualify as a sophomore, so they gave him Freshman level loan amounts (at least according to the Financial Aid clerk we spoke to), which just barely covered his tuition; so we ended up putting all of his fees and his books on the credit card. This time, according to the clerk, as a sophomore he should be eligible for more than enough to cover his school costs, but we're still waiting just in case. If we have to subsidize his student loans out of our own pockets, this time it will come out of the savings account instead of getting charged. So, not sure how much we'll have left for moving costs (and still needing to repair his truck and get my car tuned up), we're waiting. Again. Which is just as well, because it's not like there's anything decent available in our price range right now, anyway. At least we're getting him closer to finishing his degree. *clings tightly to the bright side* Labels: credit cards, money management, personal, spending |
<$Friday, April 20, 2007$>
Payday decisions
| Today is payday. That doesn't just mean I get paid today; it also means everyone I owe money to for this half of the month gets paid. Crazy as it sounds, I usually look forward to doing my bills on payday. It's actually fun when there's money left over, and I can watch my debts shrink and my savings grow. Today, though, was not so much with the fun. Despite this being the first paycheck to include my new raise, it was unusually small, being that it only covered ten working days, and it was a rare earning period where I didn't rack up any overtime. In a word: stress. We had enough to cover all of the bills and necessities, but only just. Once I deducted the tithe, rent, all of the bills, and food budget for the next two weeks, we had about two dollars left over--not enough to cover cost of living expenses until next payday. I have a little money in my Paypal account, but not that much, and I don't have another payment scheduled from PayPerPost for another six days, plus I'm counting on that money to cover my car insurance bill that's due next month. So what to do? I considered just doing without. I really doubt we could both make it, though, and we'd be too tempted to use the credit cards. Besides, since this would also mean my husband had no spending money for the next two weeks, I was worried that this might just set us up for two weeks of fighting. I next considered not paying the full amount on our rent. Since our landlady is my mother, I'm pretty sure I could have gotten away with this; but then it would have felt like borrowing money from the bank of mom, and I'd not only have to worry about budgeting the remainder into the next payday cycle, but I'd also have to deal with all of the emotional interest that went with it. Then it occurred to me that we could borrow from our savings to carry us through until next week. I'm so unused to even having any savings that I forgot it was even an option. Even when I did, I debated taking any money out of it. I wasn't sure this constituted enough of an emergency to justify touching it, and I'm so gung-ho about adding money to it that it hurts me to take anything out of it that I don't have to. In the end, though, I did just that, borrowing enough to cover miscellaneous expenses for the next couple of weeks. It didn't put that big a dent in the savings, so now that it's done, I'm at peace with it. I guess this is one of the things we have savings for, isn't it? Labels: money management, personal, spending |
<$Monday, April 16, 2007$>
The Tax Man Giveth
| My husband and I did our taxes this weekend. Actually, we went and got them done, and it made for two firsts for us: the first time we filed jointly, and the first time either of us has let a professional prepare our taxes instead of doing it ourselves. Overall, it was a great experience, and I think it just might become standard procedure. We decided to have someone else do our taxes this year because, between getting married and me having three W-2s from last year, plus a small but taxable payout from a class action suit against a former employer, plus 401K dividends and student loan interest and other stuff that we were pretty sure wouldn't go on a 1040-EZ, we thought it best to just go ahead and pay for someone who knew what they were doing, because we definitely didn't. We waited so long because we both just assumed we'd owe, or if we did get a refund that it would barely be enough to cover the preparer's fee--which goes to show exactly how much we know, which is, not much. Never having gone this route before, neither of us knew what to expect. Since it was the last weekend before the deadline, and since we didn't have an appointment, we expected a long wait. I packed up my current knitting project to take along, and Matt and I each brought a novel to get us through the wait. So imagine our delight (mostly; I admit to being slightly disappointed over not getting in any knitting time) when we signed in at reception and were told to go right in. We didn't even have time to take advantage of the free coffee and donuts, which is probably a good thing for my diet, although the penny pincher in me cries whenever I pass up free food and/or coffee. The rest was pretty painless. We handed the preparer our paperwork, he entered all of the relevant numbers, and in less than ten minutes he informed us that we were getting a pretty sizeable (for us) federal refund (we owe the state, the greedy sons of monkeys, but it's a small enough amount to be pretty well rendered painless by the refund we're getting). After that he led us out to another desk where they took care of all of the administrative processing, physical preparation (printing, attaching W2s, envelope stuffing, all that fun stuff), and made sure we paid them their fee, which took about another ten minutes. That's twenty stress-free minutes to get us back what the government owes us. TOTALLY worth the fee. So what are we doing with this windfall? Mostly, we're being responsible and applying it to credit card debt, although we're debating using part of it to pay for things we keep putting off because we don't have the money, like taking our dog for various veterinary treatments that could really improve the quality of his old age, or getting Matt some new glasses. But the vast majority of it is going straight to the credit cards, which should lower the minimum payment on the highest-balance card, which will mean more of my monthly payment going toward the principle, which ultimately means a faster pay-off. All of that definitely works for me. Labels: credit cards, extra income, money management, personal, spending |
<$Monday, April 9, 2007$>
Bad blogger!
| Color me lame. I have an excellent excuse for not blogging, though, as you already know if you follow my journal. My husband and I both came down with some kind of bug on Wednesday (which hit him harder than it hit me), and I was home sick on Thursday, which was followed by a long holiday weekend. Generally speaking, with a few exceptions, if I'm not at work, I'm not online. One of the many drawbacks of not owning a working computer. I spent today catching up and getting back into my routine. Tomorrow, I'll pay this poor, neglected baby blog some much needed attention. I have plans for it, which I hope to carry out this week and which mainly involve a redesign. I have articles planned for it, too, though, so stay tuned. There WILL be content here. In the meantime, a quick finance update: I got paid Thursday, and judging by the amount (I haven't seen my paystub yet), it looks like my raise kicked in earlier than scheduled, so there's some good news. I was able to make another dent in Chase card, as well as loading a hundred into savings. That may not sound like much, but for me that's a pretty big deal. This isn't really a general savings fund, though--it's all earmarked for when we finally move. We still need to get going on that emergency savings fund. That's going to become top priority once the moving fund is fully loaded. I did a little more personal spending on Friday than I should have, what with wanting to build myself a laptop fund and all, but it wasn't really that much, and it was my birthday, so I refuse to feel bad about it. I took advantage of a sale at Ulta to stock up on makeup items I'm about to run out of; ditto a tee-shirt sale at Target. I also found a couple of cute tops at Ross for under $10 each, and I love them, so no guilt there. The only really frivolous spending I did was stopping at Petco to pick up a treat for my aunt's poor, bored, oft-ignored budgie, and while there I bought a toy for my cats on impulse. But it was a pretty cheap toy (just some feathers and sparkly ribbon on a stick), and they love it, so I don't feel too badly about that, either. I wanted to leave off with some links, but I didn't really have time to surf around today, because I was mostly too busy obsessively playing with all of the calculators and tools over at Weightwatchers.com, where I just signed up for a free trial membership that's good for a week (long enough for me to learn all I need to about the points plan). Oh, look, there's a link, and it's for free stuff, too. So there you go. |